Tuesday, March 30, 2010

A Sony Ericsson staffer has admitted that the company's eagerly awaited Android-based touchscreen smartphone, the Xperia X10, lacks hardware support for multi-touch operation, dashing hopes that the feature's absence might be remedied by a firmware update.

After following Sony's support website which strongly advise the reader to upgrade his telephone, without saying anywhere that this will sim-lock it again, this is another good reason to stop buying Sony telephones for a while.

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Given Viacom’s own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out. The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube -- and every Web platform -- to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong.

Monday, March 15, 2010

I've updated my w880i using Sony Ericsson Update Service program, which is supposed to load the latest firmware on the telephone. After the update, the telephone is locked, displaying "Insert correct SIM" or, in French "Insérer carte SIM correcte".

Before you call Sony (I'am now waiting for them to call me back, maybe they'll do in 300 years), here is an useful hint : by pressing the following sequence : Right, Star, Left, Left, Star, Left, Star you can access the "Service" menu, which has some valuable information.

It seems that the usual tool available out there (Setool Lite or XS++) do NOT work if the CID is set to 53 (which is the case after the update, of course).

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducts independent and objective audits, inspections, evaluations, investigations, and other reviews related to programs and operations of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board). OIG efforts promote integrity, economy, efficiency, and effectiveness; help prevent and detect fraud, waste, and abuse; and strengthen accountability to the Congress and the public. The OIG's work assists the Board in managing risk and in achieving its overall mission to foster the stability, integrity, and efficiency of the nation’s monetary, financial, and payment systems so as to promote optimal macroeconomic performance.